


Between the Now

by Gammarad



Category: Song of the Sea (2014)
Genre: Childbirth, Children, Gen, Ireland, Misses Clause Challenge, Parent-Child Relationship, Post-Canon, Selkies, Thirty years have passed since canon, Unplanned Pregnancy, background Conor/Bronagh (Song of the Sea)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-14 19:23:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16918914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/pseuds/Gammarad
Summary: 30 years after the events ofSong of the Sea, Saoirse has grown up and become a marine biologist. Other than the stories her brother Ben tells, she is through with the fairy world.It turns out, however, that the fairy world isn't quite finished with her.





	Between the Now

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chicafrom3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chicafrom3/gifts).



> The story has three (sequential, not branching) endings. But, as in life, nothing is ever really over; the story ends, but life goes on.
> 
> Thank you to the wonderful people who did assorted beta work on this story (Lilliburlero, Entropy_Empathy, the_rck). Any errors that remain are the author's sole responsibility.

Ripples were forming in the shallow-seeming pool — the one connected to the ocean by a short series of gates. The round, whiskered face of a seal popped out of the water. Saoirse smiled as she recognized the face of one of her most common visitors. This seal was an older female, one who had been pregnant on her last appearance five weeks earlier. Saoirse had not expected to see her again so soon. Had the seal weaned her baby already?

Saoirse looked over at the corner of the laboratory where her assistant was still working. Though the work he was doing was important, she wanted nothing more than for him to finish for the evening and go. Once she was alone in the lab, she’d be able to swim with the seals for a while and get a better feel for how they were doing. Maybe she’d even find out if her friend had successfully raised that recent pup.

Several seals had learned the way in and appeared occasionally. Her assistant liked to encourage them by giving them pieces of fish. Having spotted the guest, he was on his way over, bucket in hand. As he approached the poolside, the marine sciences director called out, “Saoirse, did you read the latest report on the influenza recovery?”

“Yes.” The report had been inconclusive. The population trends hadn’t been good even before the seals had their flu epidemic. Saoirse wanted to stay focused on what she and the others working in her laboratory could do to help. If only the director and her assistant would go home. They had usually gone by this time. She closed her eyes and willed them to leave.

Almost magically, it seemed to work. Both co-workers said their goodbyes, and Saoirse could finally give in to her recurring temptation to join the seals for a swim. Floating in the water with the seals around her was so peaceful.

Angus and the children were waiting for her at home. She did want to go home and see them. But she also needed this peaceful time in the company of the animals she’d devoted her career to saving.

She’d worked so hard to get to this point in her life: to this place and this job. Biology at university, veterinary degree, then she'd come here to Galway for her doctorate in marine biology. Her father and brother had not expected her to leave them behind for so many years of school. The life she'd chosen was so different from either of theirs. Dad was a lighthouse keeper, and Ben was a musician. They loved her, but they didn’t understand her. 

Not the way the seals did. When Saoirse was a little girl, she remembered, the seals had been able to converse with her. She had swum with them every summer and well into the autumn chill. Ben had told her all sorts of stories about the seals, and when she was little, Saoirse had believed every one. They’d lived at the lighthouse until, when her brother had finished third year and she’d finished primary school, they’d moved to Dublin to live with Granny. There Saoirse had spent all her time studying. 

When they moved to Dublin, Ben had been more interested in music than schoolwork. He’d joined a folk rock band and spent every night out practicing or playing. He still did that, as far as Saoirse knew, even though he was far too old to live that way. But he never would listen to her about anything. Because he was the big brother and knew best, or because he was bored with whatever she said? She was never sure which.

After swimming, she usually showered and went right home. But she felt unusually tired when she got out of the water. It was as if a great weight were settling inside her, and the feeling spread to her limbs. She wrapped herself in her towel and lay right on the concrete next to the seals’ access point into the lab, and fell fast asleep.

_She dived into the cool water. The seals were warm and close around her, and she was one of them. Their voices were songs and rhythm turning into meaning, surrounding her with points of light. She felt safe, she felt loved, she felt weightless and filled with peace._

_Then the dream shifted. Red streaks appeared in the white points of light. The color of the fish and coral around them faded, grayed, looked sick. The water warmed, and the seals moved further away from her. She called after them, kicked, struggled to move, and couldn’t breathe.  
_

Gasping for air as she woke, Saoirse felt disoriented until she remembered where she was. It was so late — she had to rush home. She showered for less than a minute, barely rinsing herself off before struggling into clothes she was getting damp as she put them on and driving home faster than she knew she ought.

Even so, by the time she unlocked the door and went inside, the lights were off and there was a silence that she knew meant the boys were already asleep. Angus was sitting at his desk, reading a thick sheaf of papers under the reading lamp, its directed light leaving his home office nearly as dark as the rest of the house. He didn’t even look up as she came in.

“Angus, I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t feel well after work, and went to lie down, and I fell asleep.”

He looked up at her. She saw only concern on his face, no sign of anger or reproach. His blond hair was messy, overlong, and in need of a trim. He had a little stubble, too, not unusual this late. She crossed the room to where he stood and they embraced. “Do you think...” He stopped mid-sentence and put his hand lightly over her abdomen.

When Saoirse had first known she would be having Rian, she’d done the same thing — fallen asleep at work feeling unwell. She was surprised he remembered. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’ll get a test.“ They hadn’t planned another baby, and she was turning thirty-six in a month. They had been very careful about her cycle for the first few years after Rian, but lately they had not been quite as patient. Saoirse thought it was entirely possible she was expecting again.

The next day, she went to the pharmacy and bought a pregnancy test. It was positive.

Ben dropped by his little sister’s house to visit his nephews. His band was playing their home turf again for a couple of months, and he loved seeing the boys. Of course he enjoyed seeing Saoirse and Angus too, but it was Colm’s and Rian’s bright little faces that made him happiest. They loved listening to him play his guitar and sing them his songs, the ones that told the stories of the fairies and the kings of the old times, and even the ones that told stories of modern Irish people and their troubles. He spent an hour or two telling those, singing the ones he’d made songs for and telling the others as best he remembered them.

But their favorite stories were the ones about their family, like the one in which Ben had met the fairy _seanchai_ who grew stories out of his head like hair, and talked him into sharing some so Ben could make them into songs. 

Or the one they were asking for at this very moment, the one he always saved for last and bedtime. “Please, Uncle Ben, tell us the story of how Mam saved all the fairies?” Colm begged, and Rian put on his cutest big eyed pleading face.

Ben could never resist that face. “All right then, quit your carry-on. I’ll sing it for you.” He strummed his guitar — the one he had left for the boys to practice on, and so he could play for them when he visited — and tuned it a little. “Here we go, then.”

_The last of the selkies_  
_Was a six year old child_  
_Without a voice_  
_Living out in the wild_

_Sing, little selkie,_  
_Sing the selkie song,_  
_The daoine sidhe to Tir na Nog_  
_Where they best belong_

_There’d be no selkie song_  
_Without her selkie coat_  
_The last of the selkies_  
_Set out on a boat_

_The ocean was wild_  
_But the seals were kind_  
_And the selkie’s missing coat_  
_They all would help her find_

_Sing little selkie_  
_Sing the selkie song_  
_The daoine sidhe to Tir na Nog_  
_Where they best belong_

“Why did Mam stop being a selkie?” Rian asked. Saoirse’s younger son, he was four, almost five. “If I was a selkie, I would never come back to land.” 

“Selkies are only girls,” Colm said. “And I don’t think Mam did stop being a selkie. She still does everything with the seals.”

“Sure if she had stayed a selkie, she would have gone to Tir na Nog with the other fairies. She turned herself into a little girl and grew up, instead.” Ben smiled at the boys. “And a good thing, too, or you two wouldn’t be here to listen to my stories.”

“They love your stories, Ben,” Saoirse said from the doorway.

“I’m just after getting them to sleep for you, little sister.” Ben tucked Rian into bed, and then Colm. “Sleep now, the two of you.” He put the guitar back on its stand, then left the boys’ room, turning off the light behind him.

“Do you think they’re getting too big to still think fairies are real, Ben?” Saoirse asked as they came into the kitchen. She began fixing them a pot of tea.

“I think I’m not too big to still think fairies are real,” Ben said. He raised his eyebrows a little. “No one is. Not even Mac Lir the giant.”

“You’re such a dreamer, Ben,” Saoirse said, laughing. “Manannan mac lir, _dia na farraige._ ” 

He kept his mouth shut. He wanted to say, but you were a selkie, you really were, but he knew it was nothing she would listen to. He’d tried before. She still loved and cared for the seals; he thought it had to be enough. When the tea was ready, he accepted the cup, and drank it down.

The new baby was less than six inches long the first time Saoirse saw her. Angus had come along for the ultrasound to share the first glimpse of the new life inside her. He held her hand as they waited for the picture on the monitor to resolve from the blur it mostly looked like into something they would recognize.

“There,” said the sonography technician. “Mind we get a good look now.” The technician, a woman who was probably a few years older than Saoirse, moved the ultrasound wand around in the transmission gel to get the best reading and pictures. A light on the screen blinked to show a picture had been taken.

The doctor pointed out where the baby was in the picture. “It looks to me like, yes, she’s a girl. And she has healthy vital signs, exactly what they should be for eighteen weeks old.” 

“A little girl. Isn’t that wonderful, Saoirse?” Angus sounded happy. The technician smiled at them both.

Swimming — that was Saoirse’s first thought when she saw the tiny life. Swimming in her own private sea. So tiny, but big enough for her, for now. It felt good to have a sea inside her, with her own daughter its inhabitant. “It is that, Angus.” She squeezed his hand.

She felt afraid for the child. The fear welled up in her, and she wondered why. Was it what worried the doctors, that she was getting old to have a baby, that there might be genetic complications? That had to be why. Saoirse reminded herself she wasn’t that old, that plenty of women five or ten years older than she was had perfectly healthy babies every day. But the fear lingered on.

Conor got the call late one spring night. Angus was at the hospital, and told him the doctors thought the baby would be born some time the next day. 

He allowed himself another hour’s sleep before rowing to the mainland, making his way to the bus station and catching the first bus to Galway at six. It was just beginning to get light as the bus pulled out of the station.

The sun was fully up before the bus got to Galway. A taxi picked Conor up at the bus station. 

“My daughter’s giving birth in St. Emilia Maternity Hospital,” he told the taxi driver.

“Bless you both,” the driver said. “This car and I will take you straight there.” And that’s what happened. 

Conor called Angus on his mobile phone and told him he was almost there. “A few more minutes,” he said. 

“Give Saoirse’s name at the reception desk near the entrance, and they’ll direct you to her room,” Angus said. Conor could hear the strain in his son-in-law’s voice. He ended the call.

The reception desk was easy to find, and the woman there gave Conor clear directions. He followed them until he saw Angus’s mother with Rian and Colm in a large waiting room area. Colm was playing quietly with a tablet. Rian was sitting with his head down next to his grandmother. Conor went over to them.

“Grandad, they won’t let us see Mam!” Rian protested as soon as Conor sat beside him.

“Whist, child,” Angus’s mother said. 

Rian glared at her. More quietly, he said, “But they won’t.”

“Hospital never lets a child visit a patient,” Conor told him. He glanced at the woman watching his grandchildren. He wasn't sure why she’d brought them. Or maybe Angus had brought them and she’d arrived to watch them while he was busy with Saoirse. Conor thought that was more likely. “You three might go to the cinema, give the boys some amusement. Saoirse will be a while with the baby.”

“Mind you call or Angus does, if the doctors say anything,” she said, agreeing. Rian was not going to stay quiet for long. “And mind the children for me while I tell Angus we’re going.” 

Conor noted which door she went into. That would be where Saoirse and Angus were. “Colm,” he said quietly to his older grandson. “You’re older, so you’re in charge. Keep Rian in line.” 

“Can’t, Grandad,” Colm said, also quietly. He looked at Rian, who grinned triumphantly. “Mam says Rian is a ruffian.”

“That I am,” Rian said proudly. Conor could tell he had no idea what the word meant.

“I’m more of a ruffian than either of you boys,” Conor said, deepening his voice a bit. “So you both behave for your Granny.”

The granny in question came out of the room again, and whisked the boys off. Conor didn’t think they’d be too much trouble for her. She seemed to have them well in hand.

Once they were gone, he went to the same door and opened it.

Saoirse was on a hospital bed, and Angus was standing beside her. A man and a woman in scrubs were talking quietly. Another woman looked up at Conor’s entry questioningly.

“I’m her father,” Conor said. The woman nodded at him. Apparently he was deemed close enough a relation to be in the room. He moved to Saoirse’s side, opposite of Angus. “How are you, Saoirse?”

Saoirse smiled, then her face twisted in pain. Contractions. He’d seen this before. Most of the time, it was just how a birth went. And some of the time it was not.

For the first two hours Conor was there, everyone seemed to think this time, it was going fine. And then he saw a change in how the people in scrubs who came in and out of the room were looking, when they thought he wasn’t watching. They were more tense. They avoided his eyes more. Their voices were lower when they talked to one another. Something was not going how it was supposed to, he thought. But he couldn’t see a change, and as another hour passed, he wondered if it was Saoirse or the baby they were worried about. Maybe it was both.

Two women in scrubs were talking. “She’s not dilated in the last ninety minutes,” the older one said. “While her contractions are closer together. She might need a c section.”

As Conor watched, Saoirse was fine and then in pain, and then fine. It reminded him so much of Bronagh, that last day. “You’ve got to get her into the water,” he said, not meaning to speak aloud.

The younger woman in scrubs looked at him, met his eyes for the first time since she’d come into the room twenty minutes before. “That’s a good idea,” she said in a softly accented voice. “There’s a new water birth facility here. She’s not breach, there’s no fetal distress indicators, let’s try it before we give up on vaginal delivery.” Her ID badge read “Obstetrics Consultant Dr. Nayanika Sil.” 

Conor was only briefly surprised when, at this, the women moved as one to push Saoirse’s bed out of the room they were in. He and Angus followed down the hallway and around a corner, through a pair of double doors, and into a ward with several of what were either small pools or large bathtubs. Each was kidney shaped and had indentations at intervals around the rim. A man in scrubs stopped Conor and Angus at the front of the ward. “You’ll need to return to the waiting room now,” he told them. “Medical personnel and expectant mothers only.”

The young woman, Dr. Sil, was helping Saoirse into the water. Conor could hear her voice speaking to Saoirse, but he couldn’t make out the words.

“Sure we’ll find you when she’s back in her room,” the man said. 

Angus shook his head. “I should be with her,” he said. “I’m her husband.”

Conor didn’t say anything. There was no point arguing with authority in a place like this. When Angus gave up, he walked with him to the waiting room. He saw the fear in Angus’s face. Conor wanted to say something reassuring, but all his own thoughts were full of fear as well.

It seemed so long, though it was not even two hours, when the older woman from the room came out to find them. “Dr. Sil was right,” she told them. In her voice, “Sil” sounded exactly like “seal,” Conor thought. “Saoirse is back in her room and asking for you both.” 

Conor and Angus followed her to the room next to the room they’d been in before. Conor almost asked why they’d moved one door down, but then he saw Saoirse. She looked much better — as exhausted and glowing as she had after Rian’s birth a few years ago, he thought. A feeling of immense relief filled his heart. 

Angus hugged her. “Everything went well?”

“I’m fine, they say,” Saoirse said. She managed to smile, but her heart wasn’t in it.

Conor didn’t like what he was thinking. “And the baby, Saoirse?” He didn’t see the baby anywhere. When Colm and Rian were born, they’d been in her arms right away, or beside the bed in a bassinet.

“They took Niamh away,” Saoirse told them.

“She’s in the incubator now,” the woman said who’d brought them to the room. “She’ll be back with her Mam soon. Once the doctors see to her.”

But she wasn’t. They were able to look at the baby girl only through a barrier. She wasn’t breathing well on her own; she wasn’t making a sound. The baby looked pale, to Conor, as if she weren’t fully in the world yet. Her fringe of cornsilk hair lay flat against her head, damp and fine. Her closed eyes refused to look at the world she’d come into a short time ago.

They had to leave Niamh in the hospital for three weeks after she was born.

Ben visited when Niamh was almost six months old. 

“Look at my Halloween costume, Uncle Ben,” Rian said proudly. He paraded around the room. 

Ben clapped admiringly. 

“I’m a daoine sidhe, and I can change the mask, look! Now a fox — tricky!” 

“Good costume, Rian,” Ben told his nephew.

Colm was quietly laying out his own costume, not putting it on, but it was coming together on the bed. “A goblin,” Ben guessed.

“Yes, it is,” Colm said, almost shy. “And this cap for my head.” He set the red cloth atop the rest of the costume, then stepped back to look at the whole. “Will you be here for Halloween, Uncle Ben?” 

“No, and I’m sorry,” Ben told him. “I’ll be away with my band until November.”

“But you’ll miss Mam’s birthday,” Rian complained. His previously happy little face, mask pushed up on his head, turned pouty.

“Sure and she’ll have a lovely birthday even without me,” Ben said. “Now, would you introduce me to your little sister?”

Colm took Ben’s hand, and they went into Niamh’s room. She was in her crib, staring up at the mobile of starfish and dolphins that rotated slowly overhead. When she saw her brother and uncle, her mouth opened, but no sound came out. The round O of her mouth showed pale gums and a coated, white tongue. 

“She likes you to put your finger by her hand, she holds it tight,” Colm said softly. “Watch.” He slipped his hand between the bars of the crib, and with his index finger, lightly touched the baby’s knuckles. Her tiny fist opened long enough to wrap tightly around her brother’s fingertip.  
Colm pulled gently and showed how his little sister held on even when she had to lift her arm up in the air to do so. 

“She’s a little fighter.” Ben saw her mouth open again, and still no sound came out. He didn’t remember Saoirse ever looking so wan and sickly. She’d been pale, but with dark hair and eyes, and pink in her cheeks. He thought, though he wasn’t certain, that he could remember her at this same age, still too little to know how to crawl. “Look after her, Colm. Be the best big brother you can.”

Colm nodded. Ben could tell he took this responsibility seriously. “I won’t let Rian play too rough or act the maggot with her.” 

“You can show Rian how to be a good big brother, too,” Ben said gently. He didn’t want Niamh to become a reason for Colm and Rian not to get along.

“Will you have a baby someday, Uncle Ben?” Colm asked.

Ben didn’t want to answer. The answer was “no,” and he didn’t want to be asked why not. He came up with the most neutral thing he could think of that also had the benefit of being true. “I don’t know, Colm.” He was sure he wouldn’t, but the future might hold a strange path to parenthood that he could not see from here. 

He saw Saoirse at the door with Rian. “Your Mam wants us, food is probably ready,” Ben told Colm. Colm nodded, and they went out of the room.

While Colm was setting the table, supervised by Angus, Ben took Saoirse aside. “The baby doesn’t look well, little sister. What do the doctors say it is?”

Saoirse told him Niamh had been better for a while, worse again, a little better, much worse. The doctors didn’t know how to help her. They had never seen an illness like hers, and had no idea what to do. Some side effect of whatever made her albino, some of them said. A new syndrome, maybe a mutation, others suggested. None of them helped much.

Ben could tell she was heartbroken. He didn’t know what to do, either. He thought back to when Saoirse had still been a selkie, and was separated from her coat — when their father had thrown it into the ocean. He thought he remembered that she had turned gray, her hair white, her skin wan, looking like Niamh did. But as far as he knew, Niamh had been born a human child; Conor had been there, and Ben thought he would have mentioned if the baby had a selkie coat.

Or maybe Conor would not. There was a reason Ben did not want children of his own. There were more than one reason, and this — might be one of them.

The morning of Saoirse’s thirty-seventh birthday, Niamh took a turn for the worse. The morning was always a flurry of activity getting everyone bathed, dressed, and fed early enough to be out the door on time. Saoirse’s maternity leave had ended two weeks earlier. Angus’s mother had been staying with them to help out, but they would soon need to arrange another child care option. Granny’s endurance was beginning to wear thin.

She could hear the baby coughing the moment she awoke. Saoirse was not sure that she hadn’t been hearing it in her sleep, too; that might explain the dream, she thought, then tried to recall the dream, but it had drifted away in the worry over Niamh’s cough. She turned on the cool mist humidifier in the baby’s room and picked Niamh up, rocking the baby in her arms near the tendrils of mist that curled into the air. 

The weather was mild, cool but not yet cold, with no need for a heavy coat. But Saoirse dressed Niamh warmly, worrying a chill would be especially bad for her with the cough. Not wanting to leave the sick baby with Angus’s mother after all, she decided on a whim that she could take Niamh with her to the laboratory. The baby could meet the seals, and if she was hungry Saoirse could feed her directly, her breasts not yet dry over the two weeks of only part-time nursing. 

It seemed like the thing to do. As Granny and Angus got the boys ready, Saoirse told them her plan. They were too busy to raise objections fast enough to sway her. She put Niamh in the car seat and was off.

It was her birthday, and also Halloween, and so the others at the laboratory weren’t too surprised to see she’d brought her baby with her. Several people were in costume, others had brought children, some in costumes and some not. Saoirse introduced Niamh around, and tried not to notice how her colleagues’ faces showed their concern for the child’s ill health and silence. She looked aside from that, because she didn’t want pity or to discuss what was wrong with Niamh with any of them. After her six months of leave away, they were not quite familiar enough to ask.

Introducing Niamh to the seals went splendidly. The baby was more animated with the animals, opening and closing her mouth in imitation of their barks, than she had been when meeting Saoirse’s human colleagues. She seemed to want to swim, but Saoirse didn’t think it was safe, especially with the cool water temperatures and Niamh’s cough. 

The lab manager suggested that Saoirse take Niamh home early. Since it was Halloween and her birthday, Saoirse agreed to go. She could work later the next day to make up the time, she thought. 

Home she went, with the baby back in her car seat. Angus’s mother was still there, but getting ready to leave now that Saoirse had arrived. Granny looked tired, and that day she seemed older than Saoirse thought of her as being. 

Colm had just come home from school. “Mam!” he said. “I’m putting on my costume, and then I’ll go to the bonfire.” 

“Mind Rian,” Saoirse told him. “Keep hold of his hand. Don’t let him go too near the fire.”

“He’s a ruffian, Mam,” Colm said. “I’ll try.”

She should worry more, or make them wait until Angus was home to go to the bonfire. Colm was responsible enough, but she knew Rian wasn’t. And yet, Niamh was so sick, it was as though there was no more room for worry about Rian, with all the worry Saoirse was filled with for Niamh. “All right, go on there.” 

After the boys had gone out, Saoirse cradled Niamh to her chest, rocking in her chair, drifting halfway in and out of sleep as the baby nursed fitfully and coughed, tried again and coughed again, then seemed half-asleep herself. 

Barely half awake, she heard the front door open and close. She thought it was Granny leaving, but no, Granny had left a while earlier; it had grown dark since then. Maybe it was Angus, also home early for Halloween. She hadn’t thought he would be. Or maybe Colm and Rian had not been enjoying the bonfire. 

The shape who swept into the room was like a ghost, but more solid. A tall figure in glowing white stood in front of Saoirse and Niamh, the only dark her eyes and her long hair. A woman, Saoirse thought, who looked almost like herself, if she had a gleaming fur coat and her hair floated like that. A little different; a narrower face, sharper cheekbones, but so much like what Saoirse saw in the mirror that she thought maybe she was seeing a sort of reflection. Like a mirage? The humidifier mist somehow doing it, could it be?

“Saoirse,” the apparition said. Her voice was — somehow familiar, but Saoirse had no idea from where. 

“I’m dreaming,” Saoirse said, unsure.

“My daughter. Your little one is ill, she needs this.” It was her mother? It made sense, a little. Her mother had died at a younger age than Saoirse was now. Her dreaming mind would have thought to make Bronagh look like Saoirse for that reason. There were two more of the shining white coats in Bronagh’s arms; one full size, one tiny. 

The dream mother took Niamh from Saoirse, and wrapped the tiny coat around her. It fit perfectly. “She must come with me,” Bronagh said. “She has been separated from her coat for too long. She will not last long without it. And we daoine sidhe must return to Tir na Nog before dawn.” 

Niamh started crying. The silent baby… crying aloud. Saoirse tried to wake up. She didn’t like this dream anymore. And yet — hearing Niamh’s voice after months of wondering? She felt tears gathering in her own eyes. 

They stood crying together for what seemed like a long time. Saoirse heard the door again, she thought. Or maybe she heard the same door she’d heard before. That could happen in a dream.

She heard voices, men, she thought — her husband, her father. She couldn’t tell what they were saying, but they were getting closer. 

“Daughter,” Bronagh said, still with tears in her eyes, “when you were a child, you chose to be human, and stay with your father. Now that you are a woman grown, you may choose again.” Her mother held out the full size shining coat to Saoirse in one hand, her other arm still cradling Niamh against herself.

Saoirse, with effort, stood up. Behind her mother, she saw her boys and her father in the doorway. Conor looked sad, resigned. Colm and Rian looked astonished. 

She was tired of everything. Of the constant doctor visits, of Niamh never getting better. Of everyone expecting her to take care of them, of the constant work of being a parent, of the stress of returning to work after a long absence, the expectations everyone seemed to have that she’d quit and be a full time parent anyway, with a child so ill. Tired of not being able to swim with the seals. If she was a selkie, she could do that whenever she wanted. She wouldn’t have to make breakfasts, make conversation, make peace between arguing boys. 

“I want to go,” Saoirse said. But the moment she’d said it, she had doubts.

Her children made those doubts redouble when they spoke.

“You can’t take our Mammy,” Rian said. “We need her.”

“I don’t want you to go, Mammy,” Colm said. “I love you. Please don’t leave us.”

Ben had told them the story so many times, Saoirse thought, that they believed it immediately. But her father — there wasn’t a bit of surprise in his expression. 

She didn’t want to leave them, not really. It was only that she was so tired. But no matter how tired Saoirse was, there were too many reasons to stay. “I love you, Colm, and you too, Rian. I won’t go. You know, the seals need me too.” Saoirse took a deep breath, and gently pushed away her mother’s hand holding out the selkie coat. “But not to be a fairy. They need me to be a scientist. The world is changing — my work might be able to give them a chance. I can’t give up now.” 

Colm came over and hugged Saoirse. “Mam, I want Niamh to stay too,” he said. He looked at Bronagh. “Can she stay? Please, Granny Selkie?”

Bronagh smiled at him, though she was still crying. “Niamh can’t stay,” she said. “She’s been too long without her coat. She must come to Tir na Nog with me tonight.” 

Conor touched his granddaughter’s forehead. “Then at last you won’t be alone, Bronagh,” he said softly.

“Sure and I have been lonely,” Bronagh said. “Now I’m not the only selkie anymore.” She kissed the same place Conor had touched Niamh’s forehead, and the kiss glowed there like a willowisp. 

Saoirse remembered the wisps of a sudden, and they swirled into the room, filling it with light. How had she forgotten these lights, she wondered? She heard an echo of Ben’s song about the great _seanchai_ and remembered that it mentioned the lights. So she hadn’t forgotten them, she had only forgotten they were real.

She took one of Rian’s hands and one of Colm’s, and led them out of the room to give her father and mother a moment together, before they were parted again.

Conor kissed Bronagh for what might be the last time, although he thought there would be one more, near the end. “I have to make sure,” he said to her. “Don’t go just yet.”

Bronagh nodded her agreement.

He went out to Saoirse and took both her hands in his. “That night, I said something that I’ve come to regret.” She looked at him curiously, seeming to have no idea what he was talking about. “When you were six, when Bronagh came to get you. I said you were all I have. It wasn’t true — Ben and I had each other. And you were only six.

“Now I have a chance to make it up to you. Let you make your decision for yourself, not for me, not for Ben either. Not even for your children, Saoirse, because your daughter needs you as much as your sons do, and either way you choose, you can’t be with all of them. But be sure what you’re choosing is what you truly want. If you go — you’re giving up your husband, your boys, and your work.

“But if you stay — you’re giving up what you were born to be, and a life in a place beyond this world that you’ve never even seen, and your mother, and your daughter who you’ve never had a chance to know and to love. Don’t decide too fast. Be sure.”

Be sure. Was anything in this life ever sure? Conor turned his face away. He didn’t want to sway Saoirse’s final decision. 

“Of course I’m going to stay.” He could hear a bitter note in Saoirse’s voice that hadn’t been there before. “It’s the right thing to do. The responsible thing to do. So I’m going to do it. I always do the responsible thing, haven’t you noticed, Dad? I’m not about to go off and explore who I truly am, at thirty-seven as if it was a midlife crisis. Even if they’re real, even if I actually am one — I stopped believing in fairies when I was six.”

He wasn’t sure what to say to this. There wasn’t anything to say.

“Go tell my mother, will you? I already said good-bye.” Saoirse sighed, touching Conor’s shoulder lightly. “I won’t miss what I don’t even know. Like you said. I never had a chance.”

In the summer, Ben went with Saoirse and her boys to the beach. Angus planned to join them for a meal that evening, after work. For a couple of hours, Rian and Colm played in the sheltered beach under the watchful eyes of the Silverstrand lifeguard, their mother and their uncle.

“It’s a beautiful day,” Saoirse said, looking at the blue sky over Galway Bay. Ben thought that even though she saw it every day, it looked more beautiful to her today because her children were enjoying it with her. There was something about her expression that reminded him of how he felt when in their company — everything was brighter to children, the world was bigger and more impressive, and the adults with them could feel that too, again, for a while.

There was a pod of seals lifting their heads above the water. Colm spotted them first, and ran over to Saoirse. “Look, Mam! Your seals are watching us.” 

“Where?” Rian said, scrambling over a low rock when he heard his brother’s words. In his haste, Rian tripped, a sharp pebble or shell gouging his knee. He got back up and peered out into the water, heedless of the scrape.

“There’s a baby seal with them,” Colm said reverently. “Maybe it’s Niamh.”

“Is it pure white?” Ben asked, crouching down next to Colm, trying to see the seals from the same vantage the boy did. “If you see a small white seal, it might be her.”

Colm squinted, searching the water. “I think it is,” he said. “But they’re too far out, and there’s too much sun.” 

“If you don’t see her today, keep looking,” Ben said. “Soon enough, I know you will.”

Saoirse rested her hand on Ben’s shoulder, and gave it an encouraging squeeze. Ben was happy his sister had stopped telling him that her boys were too big to believe in fairies. It felt to him as if a part of her had returned that had been gone for a long time, a part he had missed without knowing what it was they were missing, until they had it back again.


End file.
